Among the Healers

Adalberto Salcedo, a shaman known as Delfin, near Guadalajara, Mexico.CreditDaniel Borris for The New York Times

Supported by

By Diana Spechler

May 20, 2016

TONALÁ, MEXICO — We arrive at noon and take our numbers. The more motivated, having traveled from all over Mexico, began showing up at 3 a.m. About half of the 80 people ahead of us sit in the long waiting room on benches that line the walls, while others stand clustered outside or kill the long hours wandering around Tonalá, a suburb of Guadalajara known for its artisans, its streets edged with handmade furniture, vases as tall as men, mushrooms constructed of shiny tiles. Rafael, the healer, has been receiving one visitor after another since 5. That’s what he does every day except Sunday, every week of his life.

To see Rafael, you pay one peso to get your number and then 20 more pesos once you make it into his room. That’s roughly $1.25 — a good deal, compared with a $200 reiki session in Manhattan.

Working in central Mexico this year, I’ve met many healers and shamans: the one who runs sweat lodges in his front yard, the one who can detect water underground with sticks, the one who swung a pendulum in front of me and announced that I only 45 percent love myself.

I watched one shaman give another shaman a hairless puppy in a cardboard box. I met one who is celibate and another who prayed for three wives and another who’s romantically involved with his therapist and another who cures illness with bees.

One looked at my palm and told me that my heart was broken. I’ve watched several wrap red cloth around their heads and cough out bad spirits. I’ve smelled a lot of burning sage. I’ve heard assessments of my aura. Once, when I had a bad cold, a shaman snapped my picture with his iPhone and showed me the dark entity hovering over my shoulder.

But none of those people are pilgrimage destinations. Only Rafael, according to his regulars, sees 8,000 to 12,000 people a month.

I sit with my boyfriend, Churro, on a bench. Churro is Mexican and in the know about healers. “You need to meet Rafael,” he told me recently after watching me stare into space for 15 minutes. Because I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since July, or a great one since my anxiety began manifesting as insomnia 13 years ago. I’ve grown used to a fuzzy reality, a surreal waking life that’s reminiscent of dreaming — wand-bearing children appearing mysteriously before me, clouds forming faces, a plate I didn’t know I was holding falling from my hand and shattering.

Beside us, a woman opens a mirror with one hand and draws her eyebrows on with the other. Watching her reflection, she tells us that when her neighbor was dying, Rafael showed up to perform last rites, looked at the dying man, said, “He’ll survive,” and left. The woman smiles. She says: “That was years ago. That man is still alive today.”

The cabdriver who picked us up in Guadalajara knew Rafael, too, and spoke of him with similar reverence: Rafael cured his daughter’s anxiety. The source of her panic attacks, Rafael had explained when he met her, was a jealous co-worker who had been performing rituals to sabotage her.

I’m riveted by these stories. But I’m also incredulous. I’m too uncertain, or perhaps too intellectually lazy, to declare myself an atheist, but I would never call myself spiritual, either. To my ear, “spiritual” sounds like slang for “religious” or a euphemism for “logical fallacy.”

And yet, I like people who believe in magic. I admire their certainty in something far more compelling than reality. I would love to share their conviction; as believers will tell you, belief is half the battle. You want to recover? Believe that you can.

I desperately want to recover. How nice it would be to believe my way to health, then sleep through the nights anxiety-free. But I don’t believe that belief is a choice. Rather, it’s the opposite: As soon as you “choose,” you’ve given up on believing; you’re controlling the narrative instead of surrendering to it.

Image

The shaman Quetzal (Oscar Fernando Gomez Gomez) churns a staff of feathers and talismans. He told the author that she “only 45 percent” loved herself.CreditDaniel Borris for The New York Times

I am the daughter of a scientist (“There absolutely are plants with healing properties,” my dad told me recently, “but they’re not as strong as, say, chemo”). I am the product of American academia (I often get sound bites from college trapped in my head like songs: Correlation does not imply causation … That is not a responsible sample size … Please give evidence to support your argument). Also, I am a Jew. What was missing from my childhood religious education, though, and what I imagine is missing from the organized religious educations of many, was an honest answer to the question “Why?”

Why must we pray to someone we can’t see?

Instead I learned to cover my knees in synagogue, to be quiet and sit still through sermons that I found boring as a kid and in retrospect find embarrassingly trite. I learned how important it was that I marry a Jew. I learned some beautiful rituals, too, but I had no idea what the point of them was, or if I was taught the point (“We light the Sabbath candles every week to call in the Sabbath”), the logic seemed circular and — once I was old enough to question the premises — downright unsound.

Consequently, as a Jew who doesn’t care about keeping her knees covered, who never married a fellow Jew or anyone else, who has no interest in staying quiet, I’ve often felt guilty for not participating in the religion I was raised in, or, if I do participate, confused and out of place. I stopped practicing Judaism not long after I moved to New York in my late 20s, and like everything I’ve ever grappled with for many years before leaving, once I left, I didn’t miss it.

And yet.

I miss something. Or maybe: Something is missing.

When I try to shape my life into a story, one version is a long journey to relieve my depression, anxiety and insomnia. I see a child on Prozac, a teenager eating psychedelic mushrooms, a young adult falling in love with a snowboarder, writing poems about the grief of wanting a man who’s always speeding away.

Image

The shaman Katuza holding eagle feathers in the entrance to a traditional sweat lodge, known as a Temescal.CreditDaniel Borris for The New York Times

I see all the therapists I’ve faced off with: one who wore Lee Press-On Nails and fake eyelashes that made her look constantly astonished; another who hypothesized that I was a reincarnated Holocaust victim; one who, 10 minutes after meeting me, gave me a diagnosis of bipolar disorder while eating an apple and cheese. I see acupuncturists jamming needles into my heels, a yoga mat unfurling again and again, bupropion, Klonopin, trazodone, lorazepam, Zoloft, Sam-e, St. John’s wort, boxes upon boxes of Advil PM.

I see all the beds I’ve slept in, or haven’t been able to sleep in, or haven’t been able to get out of when the sun shone through the window. I see hot-pink ear plugs and terry cloth eye masks and something called Yogi Bedtime Tea — three bags of it steeping in a mug of boiled water. I see a brief stint in Israel with the Orthodox Jews and I see a life coach showing me a chart indicating that these are the important things: health, relationships, work and spirituality, the last of which, he explains to me, is severely, frighteningly lacking in my life.

And now, here I am waiting six hours to see a protégé of Jesus, a man who was studying for the priesthood before he left to work as a healer. I am waiting to receive a laying-on of hands. Because maybe. Because who knows. Because Jesus was also a Jew. Because nothing else I’ve tried has worked. Because I’ve tried almost everything.

The woman on the other side of us, wearing rhinestone-studded glasses, starts relaying her life story. She was forced to marry when she was 12. She has six children. When she first became a mother, she was so young, she played with her daughter and the other neighborhood kids in the streets. Now, in her 50s, she’s a great-grandmother and (thanks to Rafael, she says) a lymphatic cancer survivor. She shows us photos of her children — including one of her depressed daughter. Rafael put an end to her daughter’s suicide attempts, she says, just by looking at the photo.

I ask her what she would have liked to do with her life had she never had kids. She thinks about it for a few seconds. “I probably would have adopted some,” she says.

“Are you sick?” she asks me kindly.

“No,” I say, embarrassed by the insignificance of my problems.

“Yes, she is,” Churro says.

“Only in my mind,” I concede, which sounds stupid to me as soon as I say it. Suddenly I feel like the embodiment of the dumbest parts of American culture — those insufferable people who talk about “vibes,” suggest meditation as a cure for everything, say, My passion is travel.

About four hours into our wait, a woman in a fitted pink pantsuit struts into the room, heavily made-up, her hair pulled into a complex updo. She greets people as though they’re her party guests, doling out hugs, cupping faces in her hands.

Soon after, a young woman walks in holding a bouquet of metallic-colored balloons. She approaches the altar outside Rafael’s door — statues of the angels Raphael, Gabriel and Michael (someone has blindfolded the devil whom Michael’s fighting); a wineglass of red wine; a wineglass of water; a Bible; a dead-eyed baby Jesus — and adds the balloons to the mix. Then she sets about mopping the floor, singing hymns of praise.

Image

A woman reads the Bible in front of the altar in Rafael’s waiting room.CreditDaniel Borris for The New York Times

A man walks to the center of the room, farts so loudly I think I’ve imagined it, and takes a seat.

Soon we start talking with a hulking man in his early 20s. He has a sweet and gentle face and wears a tie-dyed T-shirt. He says he suffers hallucinations. He sees devils and dragons. When he was a child, an evil elf entered his body and predicted that he would have a terrible car accident, which, seven years ago, he did. He’s epileptic and highly medicated and says his medication leaves him feeling like a zombie. He says that he’s always found comfort in watching cartoons, but lately he can’t even do that. He can watch for 15 minutes or so, but then the characters come to life, leave the screen, become too real.

Before this year, I never thought of caginess as a particularly American trait, but in Mexico, I’m frequently struck by how many people relay the sordid details of their lives without apology. This aspect of Mexico, more than anything else apart from the sunshine, has offered me relief: I like reminders that my pain doesn’t exist in isolation. Moreover, candor makes sense to me. Confession strikes me as crucial to mental health, but I’ve always considered it a subversive act. Here, the subversion feels absent; subsequently, so does shame.

Before he goes in to see Rafael, I ask the guy in the tie-dyed shirt if he’s ever been given antipsychotic medication.

“Yes,” he says.

“And how did you react to it?” I ask, thinking I’ve solved his problem: Of course he’s just schizophrenic. Of course antipsychotics will help.

He sighs. “Well,” he says, “I tried to kill my brother.”

You never know how much time Rafael will allot you. Some people wait all day, disappear into his room, and re-emerge in under a minute. During other visits, those waiting outside pray a whole rosary and then start fidgeting, sighing, checking their watches. The guy with the hallucinations is in and out in seconds. He looks pissed off and complains to the woman in the pink pantsuit. Apparently, Rafael told him he had to return seven more times, and then made a cryptic promise: During one of the seven visits, Rafael would feel moved to speak and give him advice.

“Just trust,” the woman in pink says, beaming.

“Trust! What can he do for me? Can he tell me how to fight a devil?”

Once he leaves, I turn to the woman in pink, who seems to be the unofficial Rafael spokeswoman, who will, on a subsequent visit, draw a chart for me so I understand: The holy spirit is on the top of the hierarchy. Then the father. Then Jesus. Then Rafael. I ask her, “What do you call Rafael? I’ve never heard a Catholic healer referred to as a shaman. So what is he?”

“Rafael?” she says, her eyes glazing over. “He is not an ordinary man.” At this moment, a nearby church starts setting off firecrackers, a familiar part of the cacophony of Mexico. “Rafael es un hombre de dios,” she says.

Rafael is a man of God.

Image

Rafael sees thousands of people seeking emotional, spiritual and physical healing each month.CreditDaniel Borris for The New York Times

Rafael is short. His hair is clipped into a crew cut. A belly strains his yellow polo shirt, which he wears tucked into belted pants. He could be any dude enjoying casual Friday at the office, except that an enormous silver crucifix hangs from his neck. Like many of the healers I’ve met in Mexico, Rafael has strange and mesmerizing eyes. They’re dark brown, a little loose in their sockets, as if they’re not quite strapped in.

A whole wall of his room is a display case: more Jesus and angel statues, lit by pink and blue spotlights. The religious music blasting from his boom box reminds me of the white noise machines you find in psychotherapists’ offices.

“What’s the problem?” Rafael asks me.

My Spanish is a work in progress, but Churro translates for me. We tell Rafael that I can’t sleep, that when the sun is shining, I feel mostly O.K., but at night, I become a different person as I lie awake for hours in the dark: My heart pounds. Every aspect of my life feels unmanageable. I have ideations of my own death.

“Do you want me to help you?”

I’m so touched that he asks. I waited six hours to see him, so what are the chances that I would say no? I love a man with good boundaries.

“Yes, please,” I say.

He places his hands on my head, my arms, my stomach. He tells me that’s where the sickness is — in my stomach. He tells me that I’m carrying around the resentments of two ex-boyfriends. The next time I come to see him, he’ll get more specific: On separate occasions, those men paid practitioners of black magic to curse my love life. Now I can’t find happiness in love. And subsequently, I can’t sleep. For days, I’ll turn this news over in my mind, trying to imagine a decade’s worth of exes (mostly broke artists and broke non-artists) spending their money on making me miserable. I’ll briefly enjoy the fantasy before it leaves me profoundly sad.

He tells me that I’ll need to come back a couple more times, which sets off my skepticism, until I remember that he’s making $1.25 off me per visit. My skepticism will vanish entirely at the end of the session when he refuses my 20 pesos. He’s going to make me well, he says. Today, he’ll help me 30 percent. Tonight, I’ll sleep better.

Maybe it’s the power of suggestion and the assurance in his voice, but my muscles relax. He waves his hands over my body. The quality of the air around me changes and I feel slightly woozy. Maybe this is the placebo effect, maybe it’s hope, maybe it’s Jesus working through him, maybe it’s the dream state I live in, but I recall this feeling from taking Ecstasy back in college, the first few seconds of the drug kicking in when you think you might simultaneously faint from weakness and explode from unbridled joy.

And then it’s over.

Tonight, I will not sleep 30 percent better. In a few days, I’ll meet a woman who will tell me that Rafael cured her husband in the middle of a heart attack. But for me, Rafael is not the answer. The supernatural is not the answer. Sleeping pills and benzos are not the answer. Psychotherapy is not the answer. Self-soothing is not the answer. Distraction is not the answer. Yoga is not the answer. I think I’m old enough to admit defeat — nothing is the answer. But there are moments that feel like the second-best thing.

We live in a world where people cite Jesus as their inspiration for denigrating the poor, for hating immigrants and gays and women, for rejecting refugees and accumulating wealth, but in a corner of this world, down a cobblestone street in the middle of Mexico, lives a man who spends his days emulating Jesus: He takes in the sick, the haunted, the marginalized, the wicked (cartel members, corrupt priests and politicians, murderers). He offers hope to those who can’t afford the health care they need. He faces those who have so little and listens to their stories of hardship. He touches them and lets them know that their lives can get better, that good can overcome evil. And maybe most important, he tells them, you’re going to be O.K.

“What do you do to take care of yourself?” I ask Rafael.

He gives me a look that says that’s a ridiculous question, dismisses me with the wave of his hand.

But then he spends the next half-hour telling us animated stories from his childhood, how he found his sister when she was lost, how he knew when his uncle’s car broke down, how he met a pregnant woman who wasn’t yet showing and announced that she would give birth to twins. “I’m not pregnant!” the woman had protested because she hadn’t wanted anyone to know.

Maybe this is what he does to take care of himself. Maybe this is what I do to take care of myself, what the people in the waiting room do to take care of themselves: We trade stories. We use them to impose meaning on our lives. Maybe that’s all spirituality is: imposing meaning on our lives.

Back in the waiting room a few people shoot us dirty looks: Who are we to consume so much of Rafael’s time? Of theirs? The lights have been dimmed. The woman in the pink pantsuit is leading everyone in prayer. The woman who brought balloons and mopped the floor is on her knees, her hands pressed together, her lips moving silently, urgently, in a language I wish I knew.